dj.tigersprout's photoblog
Valley Floor to the North (Anaktuvuk Pass)
Posted by dj.tigersprout (New York City, United States) on 15 September 2008 in Landscape & Rural and Portfolio.
halfway back to the village i stopped to rest awhile on the quite flat and amazingly expansive plains. possibly due to the rocky piles and some small gravel-like spots, this area was a good deal firmer than the marshy tundra that took up 95% of the landscape i had walked across during the hike. besides the incredible spectrum of warm, visible colors, it was the deeply surreal void of silence that stood out most about this area. i don't think i have ever been in a landscape without birds -- but there were absolutely none that i saw! of course, there were no trees or bushes on the plains, and hip high shrubs found only at water's edge... to boot, it was simply too cold most of the year for snakes and their temperature sensitive kin to survive here -- so that cut out the presence of most if not all reptiles that would certainly need to derive energy directly from the sun. i certainly saw no sign of reptiles anywhere. i also didn't see any traces of ants for that matter -- due to the freezing cold they would have to be dormant from october til mid may -- so it didn't seem very likely that they would be around for only 6 months of the year and possibly less... so with so many lower levels of the normal food-chain missing, i guess it really shouldn't have been so surprising to see the lack of creatures -- even though this was part of the great, Alaskan wilderness! what was around were billions of wild cranberries and blueberries, and then the animals that could subsist on them -- and of course, their direct predators: reindeer, caribou, woves, bears... humans!
this trip, i had really hoped to get a glance of the caribou migration through this valley -- it has happened every year in mid-fall since the beginning of time eternal, and the sheer numbers of the herd is staggering to see! at some historic point possibly a million or more made their way south through Anaktuvuk Pass (which means: 'place of caribou droppings') during late fall. however, now due to man's modernization, the main herd numbers only about 200 thousand or so... which would still be tremendous to see!! i was told however, at the same time i was licking my artificial wounds for being a few weeks too early, that i should be blessing my lucky stars -- had i made this trek to Blueberry Mountain just a few weeks later, i would certainly have seen the enormous caribou migration, but i would also found myself smack dab in the middle of Anaktuvuk Pass bear season... which can number at least 9 very hungry (and therefore aggressive) bears in the town vicinity!! at that point the Eskimos begin their true hunting season which means there is substantial meat hanging on drying rafters throughout the town.
inevitably, problems begin when hungry bears enter the town due to the smell of meat. to compensate for this natural threat, many eskimo children have learned to handle certain guns by age 7 -- in order to begin hunting with their families and also to keep them safe should a bear enter the village -- which happens at least a few times annually. it was a very scary prospect in my opinion, but again, in the world of isolated villages, Eskimo or not, this is just normal life in wilderness isolation. what a trip -- i could just imagine the presence of bears added to modern 'daily life' in a place like this -- for me, it certainly would be one of many hurdles to overcome and it might take a good deal of effort and time to get used to!!
here is a shot the wide plains -- if you look closely in the middle ground of the photo, you can see a lower arm of the runoff stream that i drank from much earlier in the trip. it is quite far away from where i am standing and at a slightly lower elevation too. in the distance, thick Tule Fog (or something quite similar) lies at the bases of the mountains and covers the entire northern most part of the plains in the distance... this was quite commonly seen each morning around most of the surrounding areas and of course quite beautiful to behold. the time would be about 12:15PM. i had left the house at 9AM or so and would return just after 1PM. very luckily for me, at 1:30PM it began to rain very heavily -- and for the entire remainder of the afternoon!! i took advantage of the afternoon showers to clean up and rest. i spent the afternoon in bed napping -- happily exhausted! ;)
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Canon EOS REBEL XT
1/8 second
F/22.0
ISO 100
18 mm